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  • Writer's pictureChirag Gupta
    • 7 min read

Academic vs. Play-based Preschooling Approach & Philosophies

1. Introduction

A Preschool, also known as play school or pre-primary school, is an educational establishment or learning space offering Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) to children before they begin compulsory education in Primary School. The compulsory education in India is defined by The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 for children aged above 6 years.

In India, in spite of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) guidelines to follow a child centered play-based approach,90% of Indian Preschools are following the traditional academic approach. In a recent article by NCERT, it states Preschools programmes put children to dull and monotonous routine, in which they are exposed to structural formal learning, made to do test and homework, and denied their right to play. This is an undesirable and harmful practice that is a result from misguided parental aspirations (NCERT, 2019). However, research shows that traditional academic preschooling approach can be very beneficial for some children.

The fact is there are very few preschools in India that are following the child centered play-based preschool approach and most of them are pretty expensive for a common middle-class family to afford and are mainly running under the international franchise model following the international early childhood education model.


2. Academic or Play Based? - A Hard Decision

Whether the child is studying through a traditional academic approach or is learning in a child centered play-based environment, both can determine child’s readiness to start with the compulsory education, but there is actually a dramatic difference between the two.

“Picking a preschool should be easy, but with so many different terms and philosophies, it can be overwhelming. With a little research, you can make the right choice for your child’s first formal educational experience and set the stage for a lifetime of learning.” – Lara Lewis Brown.

3. Traditional Academic Preschooling

Academic preschool programs are teacher directed and managed. In this program, children have limited choice on what to learn and how to learn.

3.1 Characteristics of Academic Preschool program

  1. The classroom, learning, and play are very structured and routine based.

  2. Walls are displayed with commercialized posters on letters, numbers, colors, shapes, calendars, birthdays, and so forth.

  3. There may be bulletin boards displaying children’s work where they all look like the same project.

  4. Children spend a majority of the time learning letters, sounds, numbers, colors, shapes, and do many writing exercises.

  5. It is teacher-directed with scripted lessons that are repeated every year.

  6. Children are taught through worksheets, flash cards, and other ditto sheets.

3.2 What the research says about Academic Preschool Program

A play based preschooling is expensive and comes with a high priced tag. Due to this, children from low income families cannot afford to take admission in a play based preschool and an academic preschool program is a perfect fit for them. In addition, children whose parents have a lower degree of education need more time to grasp academic skills as parents play a very important role in the learning process of the child. Therefore early intervention in studies can benefit these children to attain a better future.

“This is helpful for children from low-income families and for children whose parents have a lower degree of education” (Punhoney, 2013).

This program helps children become academically strong and ready to take on standardised test for admission in K-12 schools but shows similar academic gains with their peers by the end of kindergarten, compromising with their social and emotional development, as research shows no gains were found in social and emotional development among these children (Punkoney, 2013).

This program pushes children to learn at an earlier age which cause a child to lose interest and motivation in learning and tend to have more behaviour problems than their peers which can be due to push-back from the child.


4. Child Centered Play Based Preschooling

In child-centered preschooling, students are allowed to learn at their own speed with the teacher’s role as a partner in their learning journey. The focus is on planning lessons based on children’s interests and learning through play. These schools we do not see very often due to parent’s low understanding. Indian parents have a habit to judge everything. What is our child learning by going to school? If child is not learning letter, numbers, colors, etc then teacher and somewhere school is not doing good? This leads to a bad reputation for the Indian schools and they avoid taking so much of risk by mainly focussing on child’s academics, on the basis of which they are mainly being judged by parents. Indian parents need to understand that:

“Even though it seems like they are just playing, they are learning valuable skills, including important social skills and cooperation with others, learning about signs (as most items are labelled), and early math,” – Lara Lewis Brown, 2012.

Children are given opportunities to investigate, explore, and develop an understanding of their immediate and wider environment – human, social and cultural. In the exploration of their environments, children are involved in observation, questioning, discussion, prediction, analysis, exploration, investigation, and experiments. In this process they construct, modify, and develop a broad range of concepts and ideas. Children begin to handle their own feelings and emotions, learn sharing, turn taking and cooperating with peers.

4.1 Characteristics of Play Based Preschool Program

  1. The classroom may be set up into sections where there would be art, math, science, dramatic play, blocks, a sensory table, and so forth. The children are free to roam and choose which activities to do.

  2. The classroom is set up in a natural way, bringing in natural light and keeping the walls clean of commercialized posters and more of children’s art work.

  3. Teachers focus on teaching social/emotional and cognitive skills.

  4. Academic skills may be learned through play-based activities.

  5. Everything learned is through first-hand and hands-on experiences.

  6. Teachers follow the children’s lead and teach what they are interested in and act as a facilitator on learning rather than direct instruction.

  7. Activities are focused on the process of learning rather than the product.

4.2 Advantages of Play Based Preschool Program

  • Play and hands-on experiences are better learning because of a greater ability to process information.

  • Some of the greatest predictors of success are through having well developed skills in executive function skills, particularly inhibitory control (self-regulation), and socialization and this program focus on the same.

  • Relationships and powerful interactions help to foster learning and development.

  • This program takes into the account the long-term effects, rather than the short-term, such as meeting those standardized tests.

4.3 Disadvantages of Play Based Preschool Program

  • This program is not result-oriented.

  • Play-based classroom are too chaotic and some children may not thrive in it.

  • This program requires a lot of space which is not available for majority of the Indian preschools.


5. Academic or Play Based? - How to choose?

Some parents have goals and intentions for their children to be academically ready to take on standardized test for the next level, whereas experts believe,

“it is time to learn social and emotional skills so you are ready to learn those academic skills later on” (Lara Lewis Brown).

Parents have to be clear in what changes they are looking forward to in their child as they are starting the first educational phase of their loved one.

  • Do you want a lot of free play or more structured activities?

  • Do you want the teacher to direct the day or for your child to choose activities based on his / her interests?

  • Are you interested in language immersion or a focus on music or the arts?

6. Academic or Play Based? - NCERT Opinion.

The Indian National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) stated in its document (2019) that the optimal development of child in early years is influenced by the psycho social experiences and the environment the child is exposed to. This is the right time for providing optimal stimulation which is the key to the networking of brain cells, which shape the way individuals behave, think and learn for the rest of their lives.

“Children are born with an incredible capacity and desire to learn. It is important that children are provided with rich experiences through play and activities that develop critical thinking and problem-solving, understanding about themselves which are age and developmentally appropriate. Pedagogical practices must include activities and experiences for all domains of development such as-cognitive, socio-emotional, language and literacy, physical-motor and creative and aesthetic which are interlinked. Ample opportunities should be provided to explore, understand, experiment, experience and transform information into meaningful content and skills.” - NCERT, 2019.

6. Academic or Play Based? - My Perspective.

If you are looking for a one line answer, I may have one for you –

“Children from low income families or whose parents have a lower degree of education should go for Academic Preschooling but for kids from middle and upper class families should go for Child-Centered Play-Based Preschooling.”

The above conclusion is based on the fact that a toddler whether learning using a play-based approach or studying with an academic curriculum, both show similar academic gains through the end of kindergarten, but the ones who follow tradition academic approach for their preschooling experience found no gains in social or emotional development among the children (Punkoney, 2013).

“Learning foundations are built through play and experience. And we can’t afford to skip that. A push-down curriculum isn’t helping kids to get ahead; it’s simply ignoring the critical role of the foundation.” – Amanda Morgan (2014).

Smock (2017) from Washington Post says we are living in a fast-paced world where parents are busy and always look for easy and quick fixes. But child development doesn’t work like that. We can’t rush our kid’s brain to learn more, learn faster or learn in the style of grown-ups. Toddlers should not spend their days at desks, filling out worksheets and learning sight words. Childhood is too important for that.

Despite that experts always favour a child centered play-based approach, I believe traditional preschooling can be more beneficial for some children, as we should always remember that every child learns and develops differently. It is like parenting, not one parenting strategy will work for every child (Janis, 2018).

Whether you opt for play-based or more academic setting, what matters the most is child should enjoy the learning process and that should be the main focus of a preschool teacher. Dr. Robert Pianta, Dean of the Curry School of Education in University of Virginia says preschool teachers in US value that children enjoy learning. They don’t value much about that the child can read or write. But things are totally the other way around here, what parents expect from preschool teachers here is that they should focus on the child should remember the alphabets or numbers, recognize and write things.

References

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